I'd be interested to know the general opinion of storing pu in a box/chest with a device like this and plenty of room for airflow around the cakes.

+1

I have been debating doing this as well. I have a large metal lined box from Japan that is used to store tea. It is probably about 20 in by about 30 in. or so. An alternative would be to use a wooden cabinet of some sort. I haven't been brave enough to try this yet though.

I can't speak for that specific humidifier, but I've been using a dual humidifier system for a few years now and it has been working pretty well (or... at least, as far as I can tell... ). Granted, I got a cabinet designed for the purpose, so its shelves are slatted (i.e. for air flow), and it has an additional internal fan to help with air flow, but it appears that such systems can deliver on the intent to keep humidity at a certain level.

There are some inexpensive and very convenient humidifiers made to be put inside a guitar case to keep a guitar from possibly cracking due to excessively low humidity during winter. The best of them cost around $35 and include accurate indicators. Go to elderly.com and click on accessories.

I'm sorry to bump this topic guys, but I just wanted to talk about this topic a little.

I've been using the steaming bowl of water in my sheng pu cabinet (5 ft wide, 3 ft. across) and it's keeping my RH in the mid 80's during the day, and down into the mid 70s to upper 60s at night. I think I started in 08 -

anyways, no damage/ mold to the cakes, and the sharpness of the young, strong cakes has gone away somewhat. Stuff like maocha is a different story, and it might be too much for the leaves. Overall though, the changes that this high humidity has brought about is really making a notable difference in every tea that i've re-sampled. best of luck, friends.

I had originally stored the maocha in brown paper bags. Instead of the bags taking on the aroma of the tea, it was the other way around. The tea is super cloudy and tastes odd..so i took them out of their bags and put them in tissue paper about one month ago. I didn't think this was possible, but some of the proper tea aroma is coming back to the ones that were affected by the brown paper bag smell. It seems that the high moisture doesn't affect the maocha in the same way as it does the cakes. The cakes love it, the maocha seems to look and taste 'off' best of luck to all of you storing and aging tea.